Stand easy: we can’t afford a war until 2020

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Instead of covering every eventuality, let’s assume there’ll be no conventional war for a decade

With Defence now in purdah, and Labour and the Tories shelving the issue by
the device of a post-election review, we must not lose sight of the size of
the problem facing the Armed Forces, or of the political courage needed to
deal with it.

For as the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, Edward Leigh, concluded
in the committee’s Major Projects Report last month: “Britain’s
defence budget is fundamentally unaffordable.” Even if spending on defence
remains flat, the projected deficit will be some £36 billion. This is not a
figure that can be willed away by “efficiency savings” or